Friday, September 18, 2015

Woodinville joins BLS partnership


The heart of Western Washington wine tourism is the newest community to join the state Business Licensing Service partnership.

The City of Woodinville --  the 67th BLS city partner -- is adding the integrated registration and renewal system to streamline its services for local businesses.

The north King County city of 11,000 residents is home to more than 1,000 businesses which can now apply for and renew hundreds of state licenses in a single step with easy online payment options.

A toast to Woodinville: Welcome. And cheers!

Tuesday, September 8, 2015

New BLS system work is underway

The Department of Revenue is undertaking a major systems replacement project, the Tax and Licensing Systems Replacement (TLSR). This includes the Business Licensing Service (BLS) system.

We appreciate the feedback our partners have given us throughout the years and have invited experienced BLS operators to work with the project team to ensure our improvements are hitting the mark  for our customers.

Benefits of a new system

Some of the benefits of the new system include:
  • More online services and self-service for businesses
  • Better integration with state and local partners
  • Improved integration of taxpayer registration and business licensing

Transition

BLS will not be bringing on any new city or state agency partners until Rollout One of the TLSR is completed and stable, or through 2016. Existing partners will be updated with information about user training and rollout timing as it becomes available.

Background

The Department of Revenue has numerous tax and licensing systems. Many of these systems are outdated and need to be retired.

In April, Revenue Director Vikki Smith signed a contract with Fast Enterprises (FAST) to provide a browser-based, highly-configurable tax and licensing solution. FAST has worked with dozens of government entities to implement its solution, GenTax.

FAST began work on the TLSR project July 1, with the BLS system being the first of three phased rollouts. The new BLS system is scheduled to go live in summer 2016.